


Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Blue Box

by Yamx



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yamx/pseuds/Yamx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock stumble across a strange blue box in Trafalgar Square. And that's the least weird thing to happen that day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wendymr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=wendymr).



> **Betas:** Canaana  & DameRuth - thank you!  
>  **Spoilers:** _DW: The Doctor Dances; Sherlock: The Great Game_  
>  **A/N:** For Wendymr, who never reads crossovers but requested one anyway. :)
> 
> I had to fiddle with some canon details (of both shows) to make this crossover fit. It's set between _Boom Town_ and _Bad Wolf_ for _Doctor Who_ , and after _The Blind Banker_ for _Sherlock_.

They were crossing Trafalgar Square on their way to the National Gallery. Sherlock was convinced that the jewel-studded Venetian altarpiece, the pride of the current _Riches of Religion_ exhibition, had been swapped out for a fake. How he'd reached that conclusion from one blurry photo in the _Times_ showing the director shaking the lender's hand in front of the altarpiece was anyone's guess, but John had learned not to doubt him.

John was fishing greasy chips out of a brown paper bag – Sherlock, disdainful of food as always when he was working, had dragged him away from the breakfast table after his first glance at the morning paper. When Sherlock stopped cold, John walked right into him, dropping his chips.

"Bloody hell. That was my breakfast," he complained.

Sherlock ignored him, which was hardly remarkable. What was remarkable, however, was him fixedly staring at one of the four lions at the foot of Nelson's column. John followed his gaze but didn't see anything more extraordinary than a group of Japanese tourists taking what seemed to be several hundred pictures of Admiral Nelson.

John looked back. "Sherlock? What is it?"

Sherlock frowned impatiently. "What do you think of that?"

"The tourists?"

"No, not the tourists! There's nothing more _boring_ than tourists in London, John."

John looked again and shook his head. "I have no idea what you're on about."

Sherlock's frown turned puzzled. "Look, I know that you tend to miss a good 83% of what you see–"

"Thanks ever so," John interjected dryly.

"–but surely you're not telling me you don't notice a big blue police box standing right next to Nelson's Column?"

"What?" John stopped and looked again. Sherlock was right. An old-fashioned blue police box – the kind John only vaguely remembered from early childhood – was standing right underneath the snout of the northernmost lion. And worse – now that he was looking straight at it, he realized it had actually been there all along – he just somehow hadn't noticed it. "Bloody hell," he mumbled. For all that Sherlock frequently called him unobservant, how could he possibly have missed that?

Sherlock was already striding towards the box, plowing through groups of tourists like an ice breaker, oblivious to their angry complaints. John followed.

"Hm..." Sherlock looked the box up and down. "It's been here less than half an hour. But more than five minutes."

"How do you know?" John asked. Most people asked Sherlock things like, "How could you possibly know that?" but John knew better.

"It's not wet, and it was raining until half an hour ago. But there are several specimens of bird droppings dripping down the side, and they are mostly dried, which in this temperature would take at least five minutes."

John nodded. "Right."

Sherlock continued his inspection. "Looks very similar to the typical police boxes that were in use until the early seventies, but the windows are too large, and the St. John Ambulance Association badge is missing. Interesting." He dropped to his knees. "Simple Yale lock. Disgustingly easy to open." He held out his hand. "Picks."

"You seriously expect me to pack your burglar gear before leaving the flat?"

"Of course not," Sherlock said impatiently. "I put it in your left inside coat pocket."

"Oh. All right then." John found it and put it into Sherlock's hand. It was easier not to ask.

Sherlock opened the small leather case and chose his tools. "Won't be a moment."

The second the metal touched the lock, there was a loud crackle and an audible spark. Sherlock reflexively let go of the pick. John reached to examine his hand for damage, but Sherlock shook him off. "Intriguing!" His eyes sparkled like a child's on an Easter egg hunt. He reached for the pick and made to try again.

There was another spark, and then another, but now Sherlock was prepared and kept working right through them. John worriedly noted that each successive spark seemed bigger than the last, but Sherlock had caught a scent now and was, as per usual, blissfully unaware of the complaints of his body.

"Oi! You! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

John turned to see a tall man in a black leather jacket pushing towards them through the crowd, his expression stormy and foreboding. "Get away from there!" he demanded. His accent marked him as Mancunian.

Sherlock barely glanced over his shoulder and went back to picking the lock. John stepped between him and the newcomer, wondering if he'd regret not taking his pistol with him this morning. He should have known that a trip to the museum with Sherlock Holmes would never be as bloody harmless as it sounded.

The man had almost reached them now. John realized that a young couple he'd mistaken for tourists – a muscular bloke in jeans and a T-shirt and a young woman in a pink hoodie, both carrying several Boots bags – were scrambling to keep up with him. Great, they were outnumbered.

The stranger was heading straight for Sherlock. John braced himself to physically push him off, but somehow the man shouldered him aside without even breaking stride. John cursed and barely caught himself before colliding with the stone lion.

"Are you all right?" he heard the woman ask, sounding sincerely concerned.

He whirled around to look at Sherlock, just in time to see the stranger pulling him away from the door by the collar of his coat. "Get away from my TARDIS!"

"Your what?" Sherlock seemed completely unperturbed by the man's ire.

"My bloody TARDIS! Which you shouldn't even have _noticed_ , much less messed with!"

"You put a big, blue police box – lovely forgery, by the way, except the windows and the missing badge – right in the middle of Trafalgar Square and expect people not to notice?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I expect! Perception filter. No one's supposed to see her!"

 _Perception filter?_ Was that why John hadn't seen it?

"So why did they, Doctor?" The woman had dropped her bags and was standing with her hands on her hips. "That's never happened before."

"Dunno, do I? But if he hurt her..."

The younger bloke was inspecting the lock. "I don't think he did, Doctor." He had an American accent John identified vaguely as Midwestern. "But I think she must have zapped him a few times."

Sherlock scoffed. "Your anti-theft system is hardly sufficient to keep out a determined poodle."

"Didn't get in though, did you, Fido?" the American scoffed.

The other man finally let go of Sherlock and patted the side of the police box – a gesture more appropriate towards a horse than wooden panels, John thought. "She could have fried you good and proper if she'd wanted to! Just too nice, that's all!" He shook his finger in Sherlock's face. "Now tell me who you are."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. "I'm Sherlock Holmes," he said calmly.

The woman scoffed and rolled her eyes.

The tall man the others had called "Doctor" just glared. "Don't make me ask again. Hate repeating myself, me."

A puzzled frown crossed Sherlock's forehead. "I told you – I _am_ Sherlock Holmes."

"Right." The so-called doctor's lip curled in disdain. "If you're Sherlock Holmes, I'm Dr. Watson."

 _What the hell?_ John blinked. "Actually..." he began, and paused when two pairs of blue eyes turned on him with an intensity he'd thought only one person in the world was capable of. He cleared his throat. "Actually, that would be me." He held out a hand, more to defuse the situation than anything. "Dr. John Watson, at your service."

The angry stranger crossed his arms and looked back and forth between them. "Stars and damnation," he muttered. "You're serious."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock stumble across a strange blue box in Trafalgar Square. And that's the least weird thing to happen that day.

"What? But... Doctor!" Rose shook her head. "They _can't_ be."

"Know that!" He pulled out his screwdriver and started waving it up and down in front of the one who'd given his name as Sherlock, who watched him with calm derision. "Course they can't be."

Jack frowned and opened his mouth to ask why not, but the taller stranger cut him off.

"John, show them your driving license," he said with an eye roll better suited to a teenager. The other man started fumbling through his coat pockets.

Jack tried again. "Doc, Rose – what's wrong with the names they gave us?"

Rose turned to him, looking shocked. "You don't _know_?"

Why should he? Jack shook his head.

"Come on, 'course you do! Conan Doyle? _Hound of the Baskervilles_? _A Study in Scarlet_?

"Pink," the shorter man interrupted, just as Jack was about to ask what the hell a scarlet study was. "I called it _A Study in Pink_." He was holding out a driving license that did indeed proclaim him to be "Watson, John Hamish."

"Sherlock" rolled his eyes. "Please don't tell me you've read his blog. Is that what this is about?"

"A blog?" Jack frowned. "What's that?"

"'S when stupid apes tell the whole world about every slice of toast they have for breakfast. On the Internet." The Doctor muttered absentmindedly, frowning at the screwdriver's tiny display.

Finally, a familiar term. "Ah, right. Heard of that."

"Conan Doyle?" Rose asked.

"What? No, the Internet. It's what you had before–"

"Jack!" the Doctor barked.

Jack ducked his head. He had to watch himself more closely, or the Doctor'd rightly smack him. "So, Rose, you were telling me about someone named Conan?" he deflected.

Rose shook her head. "You really don't know!"

"Why would he, Rose?" The Doctor interjected. "He's from... elsewhere."

Rose nodded. "Right. Not just _Star Trek_ , then."

"Enlighten me?" Jack asked. He was beginning to feel really guilty about all the times he and the Doctor had thrown fast technobabble at each other while trying to solve some sort of crisis. He promised himself to make more of an effort in the future to make sure Rose knew what was going on.

"Yes, please do!" the bloke claiming to be Sherlock Holmes sneered. "We are _dying_ to know why we can't be who we've been all our–"

The Doctor silenced him with a glare. Jack noticed the shorter stranger looking surprised at that. Apparently, "Sherlock" was not the easily silenced type.

"You explain it, Rose," the Doctor said, turning to the other man to scan him, too.

"Well, Jack..." Rose hesitated. "There's these books. Novels. By this guy named Arthur Conan Doyle."

"Never heard of him," Jack shrugged. Rose looked at the two strangers. Their faces showed no sign of recognition, either.

"Well, he wrote this series. About this genius detective."

Matching frowns appeared on the strangers' faces.

"A bloke who could tell you everything about yourself just from looking at you. And his name was... well..."

"Sherlock Holmes?" the shorter one of the strangers asked.

"Well, yeah." Rose shrugged apologetically.

"Bloody hell." John, if that was his name, looked at his companion, who scowled in a way that rather reminded Jack of the Doctor when he'd told him about the Chula ambulance con.

Rose continued. "An' he had this flatmate, or, more like a sidekick–" She saw "John" bristle and hastily added, "–who really helped him with his cases, 'cause he was a doctor. Been in the military, too... They lived together at Baker Street 221B."

"Oh, come on, this is preposterous!" Sherlock snorted. "You expect us to believe that we're some fairy-tale characters from a book?" He shook his head. "Clearly, you've read John's blog and are now trying to mislead us with your 'amazing knowledge.'"

Jack didn't blame him for coming to that conclusion. Being told your whole life was fiction would be hard to accept for anyone. Losing two years had been bad enough, but if the Doctor and Rose were right – and Jack didn't doubt their word – these guys stood to lose everything.

"Oi!" The Doctor pocketed the screwdriver. "You were the one trying to break into _my_ police box! And you read like two normal blokes ought to, so you're probably just having us on."

"His driving license–" Rose began.

"Must be a fake." He snorted. "Come on, what's next? Inspector Lestrade and your brother Mycroft?"

Sherlock frowned. "How do you know Mycroft? Did he put you up to this?"

The Doctor threw up his hands. "No! Couldn't very well send us, could he, seeing how he's _fictional_?

"Oh, this is..." Sherlock hissed with irritation. "John, I need today's _Times_." He held out his hand imperiously.

"Left it at home," his companion shrugged.

Sherlock frowned. "Well, go buy one!"

Jack watched a brief flicker of irritation cross John's face before he turned and headed to the nearest newsstand with an air of resignation Jack felt all too familiar with from when the Doctor was in one of his moods. He felt a pang of sympathy.

They waited in uncomfortable silence until John returned with the paper. Sherlock snatched it and turned to the back of the politics section, where he pointed to a short article at the bottom. Jack could barely make out the headline – something about new EU regulations on chewing tobacco.

"Bloody hell," the Doctor mumbled. He pulled a scanner Jack had never seen before from an inside pocket clearly too small to contain it. It looked like the old-fashioned cordless phone Rose's mum had, but with a mess of cables and blinking blue lights, and a little dish on top going round and round.

"What? What is it?" Rose came around and leaned against the Doctor to look at the paper.

Sherlock pointed to the picture. "Read the caption."

Rose lips formed a perfect O.

Jack craned his neck to look more closely. The paper listed the people in the photo (right to left) and second to last was a tall, pointy-nosed man labeled "Mycroft Holmes."

"How is that even possible?" Rose asked.

"Dunno. But I intend to find out." The Doctor was fiddling with the settings on the scanner. There was a sharp "bing." He frowned.

"Excuse me," John rubbed his neck. "You do realize that you're all barmy, right?" Jack would have taken offence, but he could see how it'd look that way.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Look, I understand that it's hard to accept that you're fictional. But there's something bigger at stake here. Someone's messing with the fabric of reality. There's more at risk than just you two and your nearest and dearest being fairy tales."

"You're one to talk," Sherlock sneered. "I'm hardly going to let an alien and a man from the future tell me _I_ don't belong."

Rose gasped. Jack slid his poker face into place and saw the Doctor do the same.

John blinked. "Want to run that by me again?"

Sherlock threw up his hands. "Oh, for god's sake! Don't tell me you missed all the clues?" He pointed at the Doctor. "He's an alien. And I don't mean foreigner." He turned to Jack. "And that one's from a significantly more advanced time than ours."

"Ah." John nodded. "Of course." He indicated Rose. "What about her, then? Vampire slayer?"

Sherlock shook his head. "No. Perfectly ordinary London shop girl. From one of the council estates in Peckham. Powell, probably."

"Nothing ordinary about our Rose," the Doctor snapped. Jack thought he was rather missing the point.

John nodded, not seeming to doubt Sherlock's words. "How did you–"

"Excuse me," the Doctor interrupted sharply. "As fascinating as all this is, I'd _really_ like to get back to the problem of reality dissolving."

"Don't you want to know he found out we–" Jack began.

"Genius, him. Whole point of his existence." The Doctor's scowl turned into a broad grin. "Pleased to meet you, by the way. I'm a big fan."

Sherlock frowned in reply, but there was a pleased smile under John's confusion.

"Listen," Sherlock said, "so far, you've told us nothing you couldn't have got from John's blog. And just because you're an alien and a time traveler doesn't mean you're not insane."

"In fact, one might say it makes it rather more likely..." John muttered.

Sherlock continued, "John and I can't be fictional. It's impossible, because we're _standing right here._ "

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Fine. Rose, go get the book."

She cocked her head. "Huh?"

He started to unlock the TARDIS. "Library, somewhere behind the green sofa. The light green one, not the one with the purple trim. She'll help you find it." He opened the door. "Everyone inside. No point standing around out here. Going to start raining again soon."

Rose went in and headed straight for the library. Jack gathered up all their Boots bags before going in. When he did, he saw the Doctor pulling a tall device from behind a wall panel. Their guests were standing by the coat stand, Sherlock looking around with polite interest, while John gaped openly.

"Bloody hell. It's bigger on the inside."

"Well spotted, John," Sherlock sneered. "I knew your powers of observation were not entirely hopeless."

"Oh, get off it! Even you have to admit this is impressive."

"Well, I haven't seen many alien space ships. No basis for comparison." He surveyed the console, cocking his head. "Not very clean, though."

"Oi! Stop insulting my ship. An' Jack, close the door and give us a hand."

Jack pushed the door shut, left the bags next to it, and went over to the strange device the Doctor was tinkering with. "Fair warning – I have no idea what that is."

The Doctor nodded. "You wouldn't. It's a... you apes don't really have a word for it, but it's like a malware scanner for reality. Will help us figure out what's going on here."

Jack nodded. "What can I do?"

The Doctor pointed to a small hatch, which revealed a simple sine-scanner array similar to those found on most timeships – just bigger. "Tune the second layer to match our temporal-spatial coordinates. But don't touch the first an' third layers! I know they look a mess, but I want them that way."

Jack nodded. He'd long-since learned to follow the Doctor's instructions to the letter when he didn't understand, and only make suggestions if he was pretty certain they were viable. He pushed a few buttons on his wristcomp to get their precise coordinates and got to work.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock stumble across a strange blue box in Trafalgar Square. And that's the least weird thing to happen that day.

John watched the men – Jack and Doctor Something-or-other, from what he'd gathered – working on a machine that looked like a cross between a Commodore 64, an ultrasound machine, and a parasol. They were speaking in fast techno-babble that reminded him of Data and Geordi on _Star Trek_.

Sherlock wandered around looking at things, completely unperturbed by the frequent sharp glances from the Doctor. He finally slumped down in the jump seat by the console and took out his mobile phone.

A few minutes later, the blonde – Rose, apparently, and clearly the most normal one in this bunch – returned, carrying a huge volume. "Doctor, I don't know if this is right. It says _The Complete Sherlock Holmes_ on the cover, but there's stuff missing."

The Doctor took the book from her and thumbed through it, much faster than anyone could read. "What are you talking about? It's all here."

"No! Look, the Reichenbach Falls stuff is missing! And the one where he comes back!"

The Doctor frowned. "Reichenbach Falls? What are you on about?"

Rose shot a glance at Sherlock. "Oh, you know. The story where... the story with Moriarty. It was my favorite as a kid."

John looked at Sherlock, startled. The name Moriarty had been following them around for weeks, but this was the strangest circumstance in which they'd encountered it yet.

Sherlock's voice was suddenly cold and dangerous. "What do you know about Moriarty?"

The Doctor just shook his head, looking at Rose.

"He's... he's a criminal master mind. Sherlock Holmes's arch enemy? Doctor, you must remember!"

The Doctor shook his head. "Never heard of him. Was never in the books. An' I suspect we may have found the root of the problem. Because clearly he was when you read them." He looked from John to Sherlock. "An' you two know who Moriarty is, don't you?"

Sherlock huffed and turned away. John sighed. "We don't really know, no. Sherlock's been trying to find out, but hasn't managed."

"Yet!" Sherlock added peevishly. "I haven't managed yet. As your little friend says, he's a criminal mastermind. I can't be expected to catch him overnight."

The bloke called Jack spoke up. "So... If Rose remembers him being in the stories, but you don't, and these guys know about him, too... That means he's the linchpin this all hangs on, doesn't it?"

The Doctor's lips became as thin as a knife's edge. "Must be. An' that's very bad news."

"Oh?" Sherlock asked. "Scared of him, are you?"

The Doctor grunted. "Very few people who could cross the line between reality and fiction like that. Takes a lot of know-how. Only about five people who could do it, and four of them are dead."

"Who's the fifth?" Rose asked.

"Me. And I didn't do it, so I must be wrong about one of the others."

"Or it's someone else you haven't heard of," John suggested. He couldn't quite believe that he was suggesting that the ability to cross fact and fiction might be more common than the alien doctor thought.

The Doctor shook his head. "Nah. To do this, you'd need a Spark of Dji'Niyess, and there was only one place where those existed."

"Was?" Sherlock raised an eyebrow.

Rose made to put a hand on the Doctor's shoulder, but he shook his head and strode back to the machine he and Jack had been working on. She exchanged a sad look with Jack. John could see they understood more than had been said.

"Point is, there aren't any anymore." The Doctor tightened some screws with rather more force than seemed necessary.

"So... isn't it good if... one of them is still around?" Jack asked with a gentleness John hadn't seen from him before. He wondered whom Jack meant by "them."

The Doctor shook his head. "Depends on which one it is. Though, really, anyone who'd play with reality like this... probably not good news."

Rose stepped closer. "But at least it'd mean you wouldn't be–"

"Know fully well what it would mean," the Doctor snapped. "Not all about me, Rose."

Rose's face fell and she took a step back. Jack got up to hug her, shooting the Doctor a disapproving glance. John really wanted to step outside to give them some privacy, but there was no way Sherlock would budge.

The alien seemed chagrined for a moment, then he went back to fiddling with the machine. "Important, this. Maybe the most important thing we've ever done." He looked up at his companions. "You with me?" There was a note of pleading in his voice that reminded John eerily of Sherlock when he needed help but couldn't admit it.

They both nodded. "Always," Jack said. John recognized the emotion, if not the tone. Unwavering loyalty, even in the face of having to put up with being treated as less than equal. Been there, done that, never stopped.

Rose was about to add something when Sherlock spoke up. "I hate to interrupt your family drama, but I believe you were about to try to find Moriarty?"

"Wrong. Was about to find the root of this disturbance – which would be the Spark of Dji'Niyess. Need it to fix this."

"You mean... make us fictional again?" John swallowed. He'd been willing to risk his life for Queen and country, so he certainly was willing to risk it if the alternative was all of reality collapsing, but it seemed a bit unfair, after all he'd been through, to be told his whole life was some penny dreadful and then lose it in the bargain.

The Doctor sent him a half-smile. "We'll see. Might not come to that." He handed Jack a small device linked to the big one with what looked like an old-fashioned receiver cable. "Keep this stabilized."

Jack nodded. "Yes, sir." John raised an eyebrow at the precise military tone. Had Jack been in the forces? Who was he to the Doctor? A minute ago, they'd sounded like family, now they seemed like superior officer and subordinate. And Jack looked equally comfortable in either role.

The Doctor pressed a series of buttons. The machine started pumping, making sounds like a steam engine of yore. Jack fiddled with a dial, staring fixedly at a bright green read out, while the Doctor adjusted levers and switches, cursing under his breath. Sherlock was still playing with his phone – he looked for all the world like he was texting, though John suspected he was recording this whole thing for later study.

Finally, the Doctor threw up his hands in defeat. "Useless, this. Can see where the lines between reality and fiction are dissolving, an' the pattern's typical for a Spark of Dji'Niyess, but I can't narrow it down properly. Well, I can tell it's somewhere in London... Suppose that's something, but we can't very well search the entire city."

"Sorry, Doc." Jack put down his controller. "Couldn't keep it any narrower."

The Doctor shook his head. "Not your fault, lad. You did fine. Too much interference here – too many temporal twirls and eddies. Most of 'em are probably my fault, or will be. Though there's something strange going on down in the Docklands. Will have to keep an eye on that. But it's not the gem, an' that's more important right now."

Sherlock perked up. "The Spark of Dji'Niyess is a gem?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of. It's a kind of crystal only found in one place in the universe, and it'd have to be cut into a very specific shape to work as a catalyst for this type of thing."

Sherlock cocked his head. "A sideways figure eight, about three inches across, with an upside-down triangle in the middle and various small notches and etchings?" he asked.

The Doctor stared, dumbfounded. "How'd you know?" John grinned to himself. Even aliens could be baffled by the phenomenon that was Sherlock.

"Times." Sherlock held out his hand. John pulled the newspaper from the large outer pocket of his coat and handed it to him, curious to see what Sherlock had spotted this time that everyone else had missed. Sherlock unfolded it and shook out the crumples, then pointed at a picture on the first page of the _Arts_ section.

It was the photo of the Venetian altarpiece that he'd declared a forgery over breakfast. The top of its middle panel was adorned by a jewel in the shape of a sideways figure eight with a triangle in the middle. Sherlock grinned smugly.

"That's it? It's in the National Museum?" the Doctor sputtered.

"No," Sherlock said. "This is a forgery. See, the–"

"Ah, right. Obvious," the Doctor interrupted.

Sherlock looked flummoxed. "You see it?"

"Not blind, am I?"

John exchange a glance of mutual understanding with Jack and Rose, who were looking at the picture over the Doctor's shoulder.

"So then, how do we find the original?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, we were on our way to the museum when we got distracted by your box," John offered. "Maybe we should all–"

"Pointless!" Sherlock exclaimed. "Clearly, this is much bigger than we thought. What we need is lots of monkeys to do the legwork." He strode towards the door.

The Doctor followed, still holding the _Times_. Rose and Jack scrambled to keep up with him.

"Where are we going?" Rose asked.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Scotland Yard," he said just as Sherlock opened his mouth to reply.

John had to suppress a grin at the peeved annoyance on his friend's face. All those times Sherlock had complained about not having "a single intelligent soul who can at least half keep up with me!" came back to him. "Be careful what you wish for," he mumbled as he joined the others. The slight stiffening in Sherlock's shoulders made him wonder if he'd heard. The low chuckle from the Doctor made him sure that _he_ had.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock stumble across a strange blue box in Trafalgar Square. And that's the least weird thing to happen that day.

They ended up at the museum after all – but with a bunch of policemen, technicians, expert consultants, crime scene investigators, and other folks Rose had only ever seen on American TV shows. It was much more exciting than their yearly class trip to the museum when she was in school.

The curator sneered at them at first, and then turned a deep shade of lobster as the Doctor and Sherlock fell all over each other in their eagerness to explain how the grainy picture in the _Times_ proved beyond a doubt that the altarpiece was a forgery.

"But... what will I tell the lender?" the curator stammered. "Can you find the culprit?"

"Naturally," Sherlock said with a shrug.

"Course!" the Doctor said at the same time.

They looked at each other and back at the curator, nodding decisively.

"Sherlock has no idea where to start looking," John told Jack and Rose.

"Neither does the Doctor," Jack said. Rose nodded. It was plain from the fact that he was just standing there. If he knew what to do, he'd be doing it. She suspected that it was the same for Sherlock.

Security footage revealed that all cameras in the museum had simultaneously failed to record for the same 15 minutes the night before the opening. The security guards on duty – all trusted long-term employees – said they had no memory of any transmission failure that night.

Finally, one of them, Burns, admitted that he had actually nodded off – "Just closed my eyes for a second, sir, could not have been a quarter hour, honest to god!" – and that prompted the others to confess that they, too, had "rested their eyes" at exactly that time.

"Impossible," John muttered. "You're telling me someone put the guards _and the cameras_ to sleep?"

Jack shrugged. "Some kind of temporal distortion field could do that. It'd make the chips in the cameras go nuts. And no human brain could handle time being warped like that. They'd just... shut down."

"But then how could the thief have got in here? Tin foil hat?" John asked.

" _Human_ brain, I said."

John rubbed his neck. "Ah. Right."

The front doors opened, and a tall, lanky man with short, wavy brown hair and a pointed nose strode into the foyer. He was followed by bulky men in black suits that practically screamed "bodyguard."

"Uh oh," John sighed.

"Who's that?" asked Rose.

"Trouble."

The newcomer headed straight for the Doctor. Barely glancing at Sherlock, he held out a hand. "Doctor! Mycroft Holmes. So good to finally meet you!" They shook hands, the Doctor looking somewhat askance. "I've been a great admirer of your work my entire career!"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Oh, cut the flattery, will you? Most of your 'career' before the last few days is entirely fictional."

Mycroft smiled patronizingly. "Oh, come on, Sherlock. How often do we meet someone smarter than ourselves?" He gave his brother a measuring look "Well, I suppose you do at every family reunion, but for me this is quite exciting!" He turned back to the Doctor. "UNIT still sorely misses your counsel. I don't suppose I could convince you...?"

The Doctor used to work for some government agency? Suddenly the way he'd been treated in Downing Street made a lot more sense.

"No," the Doctor said simply. "Gonna sort this mess, then we're leaving."

"Of course, of course. But if you ever change your mind, give me a call." He handed him a card which, Rose noted, contained nothing but a London area code and a three-digit phone number.

The Doctor pocketed the card with a grunt. "Don't hold your breath."

"Indeed. So, I heard about this... unpleasantness." He glanced at Sherlock. "It seems we're suffering from a slight case of... fictionality?"

"Who told y– Ah, never mind." Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Listen, _dear_ brother, I'm going to solve this without your help. So go back to pushing pencils and drafting EU regulations about the stiffness of toothbrush bristles." Seeing the two of them snarl at each other, Rose felt glad to be an only child.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, my dear Sherlock, you seem to be overlooking the fact that this could all lead to rather unpleasant consequences – not just for us, but for the entire country." He dropped his voice conspiratorially. "I'm currently taking care of some... affairs that really need a delicate touch. It'd be bad for Queen and country if I were to disappear now."

"Oh, don't be so self-important!" Sherlock rolled his eyes. "None of us want to vanish off the face of the Earth, but I'm sure the Earth would recover."

Mycroft smiled condescendingly. "Well, brother, maybe a 'consulting detective' and his flatmate wouldn't be missed. I, on the other hand–"

"Have you heard," John interrupted, "the title of that book series we're apparently from? _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_." He smiled sweetly. Rose silently cheered.

Sherlock grinned. "Yes! Maybe a consulting detective has more of an impact than you imagine, dearest brother."

"Or maybe," Mycroft sneered, "he has a web page and his own blogger, whereas some of us take care to handle our business more discreetly. Which wouldn't make it any less tragic if we disappeared." Despite the seriousness of the topic, Rose had to suppress a giggle at seeing the most brilliant detective the world had ever known and a senior government official sniping at each other like school boys.

"Wouldn't disappear." Rose could hear the annoyance in the Doctor's voice. She estimated they were about thirty seconds from a "stupid apes" tirade. "You'd never have existed in the first place."

"Of course. Still, I can't help thinking that, without my protection, many little people would suffer." He looked directly at Rose. "Council flats might have to be demolished."

She was moving before he'd finished the sentence. "You bastard! Don't you dare threaten my mum!" She'd have slapped him right then and there, but Jack hugged her tightly from behind, pinning her arms.

"Shhhh, Rose," he said, with a worried glance at the armed men in black standing three paces behind Mycroft, each with a hand inside his jacket. "It's all bluster. If he never existed, he wouldn't be able to have done anything to your mother, and any 'arrangements' he makes now would never have been made."

Mycroft smiled like a Disney snake. "Excellent logic, Captain."

"Not gonna beat us at our own game." The Doctor sighed impatiently. "Could we have less of the bluster? Not going to take away your existence, me. Not unless I have to. S'ppose you'd agree that if it's between you an' all reality, it'll have to be you getting the nod."

Mycroft nodded, apparently satisfied. "Eminently reasonable. Say, if you don't want to work for UNIT, maybe a position on my staff–"

The Doctor cut him off with a raised eyebrow.

Rose felt glee at Mycroft's obvious consternation. "My genius is better than your genius," she whispered to John.

He smiled indulgently. "At handling Mycroft, certainly."

Mycroft brushed an imaginary piece of lint off his lapel. "Right. Well, then, carry on everyone. Let me know if I can be of assistance." He turned and left, taking his bodyguards with him.

"Wow." Rose scoffed. "Mycroft Holmes. Never thought he'd be such a wanker."

Sherlock threw her a smile brilliant enough to rival one of Jack's. "Insufferable, isn't he?"

"Oh, was your brother here?" Lestrade asked, emerging from one of the storerooms with the curator. Without waiting for an answer, he continued. "I'd say we're pretty much done. Going to pack up and return to the Yard to write a report."

Sherlock sighed. "This is so typical of the police. You have no idea what happened, but you're going to prioritize paperwork over actually finding the culprit."

"Not at all," Lestrade said. "If you you have an idea what else we can do here..."

Sherlock huffed irritably.

"Right then, let's go." The Doctor rubbed his hands.

Lestrade raised an eyebrow. "You're bringing your... friends? Again?"

"More shocked that he _has_ any..." a bearded guy Rose hated on sight mumbled, loudly enough for everyone to hear, but quietly enough for Lestrade to ignore.

Sherlock didn't dignify him with any sort of reaction. He just nodded at Lestrade. "I told you. They're with me."

That was indeed all he'd told him. Rose had been amazed that a haughty look and that one sentence had been enough to get them access to a crime scene. But it was probably for the best. The fewer people they had to tell they weren't real, the better.

Lestrade sighed. "Look, I let you drag Dr. Watson around with you–"

"Standing right here," John interrupted mildly.

Lestrade sent him a sheepish glance, but pressed on, "but I can't allow you to bring your entire reunion class with you any time you feel like it."

Sherlock sighed an gestured at the Doctor. "Listen, this man is–"

"An expert in Venetian art!" the Doctor interrupted. "Sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier." He held out his hand. "Professor Smith. Head of Art History, Gallifrey University. And these–" he gestured at Jack and Rose, "–are my assistant, Dr. Jack Harkness, and Rose Tyler, our most promising graduate student."

Rose snorted inwardly. Graduate student, right. Thinking about maybe sitting her A-levels in art was as close as she'd ever got to that.

Lestrade shook the Doctor's hand, merely glancing at Jack and Rose. "Pleasure. Of course, if you'd mentioned this _earlier_ –"

"Of course, of course! Guess we all got swept up in the excitement of the chase." He put on an endearingly clueless look that almost made Rose burst out laughing. Jack covered his mouth and faked a cough.

Lestrade smiled tightly. "Well, then, do you have any insights?"

"Not yet." The Doctor smiled brilliantly.

Lestrade nodded. "I see. Well then." He signaled his men and everyone packed up much more quickly than Rose would have thought possible and filed out the doors. "Come on, then," he said to Sherlock.

Sherlock shook his head. "We'll take a cab."

"All right. See you there." With a curt nod at all of them, Lestrade left.

John looked at Sherlock and asked dryly, "We're not really going to Scotland Yard, are we?"

"Of course we are!" Sherlock protested. John just kept looking at him. "After one brief delay," Sherlock admitted.

Rose frowned and looked at the Doctor, but he didn't seem to know what Sherlock was planning, either. Jack just shrugged.

"Won't be a minute," Sherlock said and dashed out the front doors.

The others had to scramble to keep up. As they squeezed through the heavy double doors, John smiled apologetically. "Sorry. He's like that when he gets his teeth into something."

Rose laughed. "We understand."

"Better than we'd like to," Jack added with a grin. The Doctor smacked his shoulder, but without any seriousness.

Outside, they saw Sherlock at the foot of the staircase leading up to the gallery entrance. He was talking to a woman sitting on a low wall overlooking Trafalgar Square. From her ragged clothes and the several overstuffed plastic bags gathered at her feet, Rose concluded that she was homeless. Sherlock was handing her several banknotes.

"Ah," John said, clearly not surprised at Sherlock's sudden charity. "He's buying eyes."

Rose frowned and was about to ask a question, but the Doctor grinned widely. "Fantastic."

John nodded. "Usually works quite well, yes. If there was anything to see that night, one of them will have seen it."

Rose got it. Using homeless people as spies. Brilliant. They were everywhere in London.

There was a sharp whistle. She looked back to Sherlock. He was impatiently waving at them to come down. She saw John roll his eyes in exactly the way Jack often did – and she herself very likely as well, though she'd never seen that, of course. He started towards his flatmate.

The Doctor bristles. "Who does he think he–"

"Who're you to talk?" She grinned at him. Jack chuckled.

He grumbled, but took her hand as they followed John down the stairs.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock stumble across a strange blue box in Trafalgar Square. And that's the least weird thing to happen that day.

As they pulled up outside New Scotland Yard, Jack looked up at the glass-and-cement building and wondered how this clunky architecture could ever have been considered "sleek and modern."

They were barely out of the taxi when a constable ushered them inside. "Mr. Holmes, quick, Inspector Lestrade needs to see you right away."

Lestrade met them in the lobby. "This was on my desk when I got back. No one knows how it got there." He handed Sherlock a note. It looked like it had been written on one of those typewriters Jack was familiar with from 1941. Completely outdated even by the standards of Rose's time.

_Dear Sherlock,_

_wish you were here._

There was no signature.

Sherlock looked at it carefully, sniffed it, inspected it from both sides. Then the handed it to the Doctor, who scanned it with the screwdriver, seeming equally flummoxed. Jack was about to suggest trying his wristcomp when John spoke.

"Why a typewriter?"

Sherlock's eyes lit up. "Of course!" He snatched the note back from the Doctor.

"What did I say?" John wondered. Rose shrugged. Jack sent him a sympathetic smile. _The joys of living with someone whose thought process you can't begin to predict..._

Sherlock strode over to the reception desk. "It's a clue!"

"Course it is," the Doctor said. "But to what?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "It's a clue to the real clue, obviously." He started rummaging through the desk drawers. The sergeant on duty began to protest, but Lestrade silenced him with a gesture.

"Want to elaborate on that, Sherlock?" John suggested. Jack was grateful. Who knew life with two geniuses would be more than twice as frustrating as with one?

Sherlock sighed. "Type levers impact on paper. Ink leaves an imprint – unless you remove the ribbon." He started going through the drawers on the other side. "Aha!"

He held up a pencil sharpener triumphantly. He opened it. The shavings spilled out over the note and the blotter. The sergeant grumbled, but didn't comment.

Sherlock rubbed the pencil shavings over the note with the tip of his index finger. Stepping closer, Jack saw that while most of the paper turned a dark, silvery gray, some symbols near the word "here" stood out in white. He whistled appreciatively. "Clever."

The corner of Sherlock's mouth quirked up in an arrogant smile. "Child's play." Huh. Even the Doctor was less dismissive than that. Usually.

"What's it say?" the Doctor asked, an edge of annoyance in his voice.

Sherlock's self-satisfied expression changed to one of irritation. "It's a number." He held it up for all to see. "40.756 – 74.013." With his other hand, he pulled out his phone. "These must be–"

"Coordinates," the Doctor interrupted. Jack exchanged a pleased grin with Rose.

"Yes," Sherlock said, irritably fumbling with his phone. "But this is nowhere near London. I have to check–"

"Course it's not." The Doctor grinned smugly. "That's New York City." Seeing Sherlock's utterly annoyed expression at being preempted, Jack had to bite back a chuckle.

"New York?" John frowned. "There's no way he could have got there this quickly by ship, and smuggling the altarpiece on an aeroplane would be tricky." Jack wanted to suggest that someone capable of crossing the lines of reality and fiction might also have a functioning teleport, but that was hardly an appropriate thing to say in front of Lestrade and his men.

The Doctor shrugged. "That's where those coordinates are, though. Right smack in the middle of the river."

"The river?" Sherlock asked.

John rolled his eyes. "Please don't tell me you've 'deleted' that, too. New York's on the–" He stopped and his eyes widened. "The _Hudson_ River." His shocked expression seemed disproportional to the news.

Sherlock almost leaped over the duty desk and ran towards the door. "Lestrade, we need a car. One of the big ones." Jack turned to follow, utterly confused.

They ran after Sherlock. Jack took Rose's hand. "I don't understand. What's going on?"

Rose shot him a worried glance as she opened back door of the car Sherlock had clambered into, the Doctor hot on his heels. "Mrs. Hudson is their housekeeper."

"Landlady," John corrected, squeezing into the backseat with them.

"Oh, who cares if we call her a housekeeper or a landlady!" Sherlock exclaimed. "She's Mrs. Hudson! And she's in trouble!" He gestured to the officer at the wheel. "221B Baker Street. Drive!"

As they pulled out into traffic, sirens blaring, Jack saw Lestrade and some officers get into another car and follow them.

Even with the sirens, the drive through crowded London streets took over twenty minutes. The car hadn't fully stopped yet when Sherlock jumped out, closely followed by John. Jack, Rose, the Doctor, and the police officer followed them through a dark wooden door.

"Mrs. Hudson!" Sherlock bellowed, his voice resonating in the narrow hallway.

"Sherlock!" came a voice from upstairs. She sounded choked with tears. "Sherlock, I'm in your kitchen!" Jack had to squeeze himself flat against the wall as Sherlock barreled past him in his haste to get to the steps.

They ran upstairs, just as the door slammed open to admit Lestrade and some of his officers.

Upstairs Sherlock led the way through a messy living room into an absolutely chaotic kitchen. A woman who looked to be in her late sixties was tied to a rickety wooden chair with several bundles of colorful cables which led to a ominous device on the table in front of her – Jack recognized it as a primitive bomb.

"Rose, get back downstairs," he whispered urgently. She glared at him wordlessly. Damn stubborn– well, if he was honest, he wouldn't go either if the Doctor asked him to. Which was probably why the Time Lord didn't bother asking.

Sherlock leaned over the bomb, resting one hand on the old woman's shoulder. "It's all right, Mrs. Hudson."

'"Sherlock! Sherlock, I'm so glad you're here! That man, that terrible man..."

The Doctor pushed his way into the kitchen, but Sherlock would not be budged from his position next to Mrs. Hudson and the bomb.

"Step away from there, both of you," Lestrade said reasonably. "Sherlock, let me call the bomb squad."

"There is _no time_ ," Sherlock hissed. "It could blow up any second."

"Don't need 'em." The Doctor sounded calm and confident. "Just step back and let me work." Jack fervently hoped Sherlock would listen. A primitive timer like that was no match for the sonic screwdriver.

Sherlock glared.

"Sherlock," John said calmly. "You've seen what he can do with technology."

Sherlock stiffly took a step back. The Doctor took his place and quickly played the sonic screwdriver across the bomb. He frowned. "Cleverer than it looks."

"Can you disable it?" Lestrade asked.

A beep. "Just did."

Lestrade frowned. "Just like that?" He straightened his shoulders. "Art historian, you said?"

The Doctor looked caught out. "Yeah, well..."

Sherlock had started tearing the cables off Mrs. Hudson. "John," he snapped, but his companion was already by her side, taking her pulse and muttering reassuringly. Jack remembered Rose saying he was a doctor. The medical kind.

"You're just shaken up. You'll be okay," he announced after a few minutes.

"I'll put the kettle on," Rose said, slipping around to a back corner of the kitchen.

Everyone was focusing on Mrs. Hudson. Jack almost missed the Doctor removing a small part of the bomb and slipping it into his pocket.

"Thank you, dearie." Mrs. Hudson took a deep breath to steady herself. "I was up here cleaning a little – you really should keep the place tidier, Sherlock, I'm not your housekeeper, you know? – and suddenly someone grabbed me, and–"

"Who was it? Did you see him?" Sherlock interrupted.

"Yes, when he was tying me up. He was a skinny bloke, maybe a little taller than John... he had an Irish accent."

Lestrade was scribbling in his notebook. "Irish?"

"Yes. Dublin, it sounded like. I once had a lodger who..." She shook her head. "He said... he said if you didn't work out his clue... if you didn't get here in time..."

Sherlock looked away and started studying the wall. John rubbed her arm reassuringly. "We did get here in time. No harm done."

Mrs. Hudson smiled at him, her eyes suspiciously wet.

Rose put a cup of steaming tea down in front of her. "There you go."

"Oh, thanks, dear." She picked up the cup and blew on the surface.

"An' I found your lunch." Rose held up a plate of what looked like some sort of pasta dish. "Do you want me to heat it up for you? It's no trouble."

Mrs. Hudson looked puzzled. "That's not mine, dear. I have my own kitchen downstairs, you know?"

John frowned and looked at Sherlock. "Experiment?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Clue!" He took the plate from Rose. "Where did you find it?"

"Right back there, on the counter."

Sherlock sniffed the plate as the Doctor scanned it. "Spaghetti Carbonara. Perfectly ordinary."

"'S not poisoned," the Doctor added.

John stepped closer. He dipped a finger into the sauce and licked it. "That's not just any Spaghetti Carbonara. That's Angelo's."

Sherlock's eyes focused on John with complete intensity. "Are you certain?"

"I've had them often enough, haven't I? There's some herbs he adds... secret family recipe, he says." He looked at Sherlock seriously. "To the restaurant?"

Sherlock nodded. "Lestrade, stay here and take care of Mrs. Hudson."

"My men–"

"Stay!" Sherlock shouted, already half-way down the steps, the Doctor right behind him.

Jack, Rose and John ran after them. Jack had to leap to open the door of the police car Sherlock was commandeering – silly of the driver to leave the keys in – to prevent their two geniuses from driving off and leaving the mere mortals behind. He glared at the Doctor, who at least had the decency to look abashed, as he ushered Rose into the backseat.

Sherlock merely drummed his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently.

John walked around to the driver's door. "I'm driving, Sherlock." Jack couldn't believe he was wasting time quibbling about that.

"John, this is hardly the moment for–"

"–for you to learn how to drive? Agreed." He looked at him calmly, standing too close for Sherlock to just pull away and leave him behind.

"You can't drive?" the Doctor asked, aghast.

"I don't know. I've never tried," Sherlock answered petulantly. Jack shook his head. Piloting a vehicle, especially a primitive one like this, definitely took practice.

"And you're not going to now." John held his place.

"Fine!" Sherlock snapped. He got out of the driver's seat and sat in the back next to Rose. "Just _drive_ , will you? You have to take the next left and–"

"Yes, thank you, I know the way." John pulled out into traffic.

The Doctor pointed the screwdriver at the dashboard, and the sirens and lights came to life. "Get us there a little faster," he explained.

"Ta." John stepped on the accelerator. "Everyone buckle in." Jack tried, but was flummoxed by the primitive snap mechanism until Rose helped him with it.

"Doctor," Jack asked as they were moving along. "When you disabled the bomb, I thought you..." He left it hanging there in case the Doctor didn't want to explain.

"Noticed that, eh?" The Doctor pulled a small dodecahedron that seemed to be made from translucent metal out if his pocket. Jack recognized it as the part he'd taken from the bomb earlier. "Figured I'd better make this disappear before the police techs got their hands on it. The rest of the bomb was all current technology, but this its a bit more advanced."

"What is it?" Rose asked.

"Spy cam. Was transmitting pictures from the kitchen right to whoever has the second half of the pair."

"Can you trace it?" Sherlock asked eagerly.

The Doctor shook his head. "Went dead the second I spotted it."

"So whoever planted the bomb recognized you?" Jack asked. Why else would they have turned it off? Sherlock certainly wouldn't have been able to trace the signal, and neither would Scotland Yard.

"Looks like it," the Doctor nodded. "And they also know where we're going next."

Great. An enemy who knew the Doctor and could predict their next move. No way for that to go wrong.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock stumble across a strange blue box in Trafalgar Square. And that's the least weird thing to happen that day.

John stopped in front of the restaurant – there was no parking, of course, so he just left the car in the middle of the street. A police car with the lights going – people could damn well figure out it was an emergency. He pocketed the keys. Wouldn't do to have their stolen police car stolen.

The restaurant door was locked. Sherlock moved to pick it but was preempted by the Doctor, who used that brilliant little gadget of his to open the lock. They entered the restaurant to find Angelo lying tied on one of his own tables. "Don't move!" he whispered urgently. "It'll come down!"

John followed his gaze. On the ceiling above him, a large sharp piece of metal – it looked like some sort of machine part – was dangling from a thick hemp rope that was slowly unraveling. The thinnest part was now only a few fraying strands. "Bloody hell," he muttered.

"Jack, quick!" The Doctor nodded at a sideboard. Jack seemed to immediately understand. Together they lifted the sturdy oak construction – the Doctor hefted his end with ease, but Sherlock had to help Jack with his – and held it over Angelo. There was not enough room on the table to place it there.

John realized Rose had already started on the knots, trying to untie Angelo. He pulled out his pocket knife – and damn the weapon laws that only allowed blades of less than three inches to be carried on a person – and started sawing the ropes.

"Hurry up, there," the Doctor said through clenched teeth. "Can't hold this up forever."

"I'll look for a bigger knife!" Rose said and ran through the swinging double doors to the kitchen.

John kept cutting. The knot was almost off now. Maybe three more goes with the knife. Two.

Then everything happened at once. With an unearthly crash, the metal came down and buried itself in the sideboard – so deeply the tip of it came through on the underside. The impact made the others lose their hold on the table, but the Doctor managed to shove it sideways so it came down on the restaurant floor next to the table Angelo was tied to rather than smashing him. At the same time, the knot finally gave way and Angelo half-jumped and half-fell towards John.

The moment of noise and chaos was followed by complete silence. "Everyone all right?" the Doctor asked.

They nodded.

Jack pointed to the ceiling. "I think I found our next clue."

John looked up from where he was kneeling next to Angelo, examining him. There were some symbols scribbled next to the hook where the frayed end of the rope was still dangling. He stood to get a better look, pulling Angelo up with him.

"Ah, don't worry about those," a cold, strangely high-pitched voice came from behind him. He turned and froze. A man was standing in the kitchen doorway, an arm around Rose's throat and a gun at her temple. John admired how composed she seemed – more angry than scared, really.

The stranger smiled. "I decided to cancel the third leg of the scavenger hunt when I saw who was with you."

Dublin accent. A tad taller than himself.

"Moriarty?" Sherlock asked.

The stranger grinned. "In the flesh."

Out of the corner of his eye, John noticed Angelo backing towards the door. Rose glanced at him, then quickly looked away.

"You. I knew it was you." The Doctor sounded stricken.

"Hello, Doctor." Moriarty's smile grew even wider. "Pleasure to meet this you." He frowned. "Shame about the nose."

"Great voice," the Doctor countered. "Very _masterful_."

Moriarty sneered. "Can't win them all."

Angelo reached the door and slowly pushed it open. Moriarty showed no reaction – John wasn't sure if he didn't care, or was too focused on the Doctor to notice.

Sherlock looked at the Doctor. "You do know Moriarty?"

"Not his real name." A dry laugh. "Well, 'real name' means something different to my people, anyway." Angelo slipped out the door – to get help, John hoped.

 _His people_. Did that mean... ?

Sherlock looked back at Moriarty. "You're an alien!"

Moriarty sneered. "Clearly your reputation as a genius is well-deserved."

"Let Rose go," the Doctor said calmly.

"What, this one?" He moved his gun from her temple to her throat. John saw her swallow convulsively. He felt himself stiffening. "Sorry, I already let the fat one get away. One is all you get." He made a show of sniffing Rose's ear. She looked fit to murder him. "Is this your newest pet?"

"She's not a pet! She's my companion. And you will let her go." His voice was calm, but with a hint of darkness that made the hair on the back of John's neck stand up. Even Sherlock looked impressed.

Moriarty just laughed, though – a shrill, cacophonous sound. "No, sorry. I need your companion animal a bit longer. But don't worry, I'm not going to break her... as long as everyone stays nice and calm." He glared at Jack. "And keeps their hands where I can see them." Jack immediately spread out his hands. He must have been going for a weapon.

Moriarty – or whatever his name was – looked back to the Doctor. "So, you found me," he said with an amused smile.

"Wasn't even looking." The Doctor cleared his throat. "Why'd you do it? Mix fiction an' reality like that? You know what kind of havoc that can cause." John saw Sherlock leaning forward, completely focused on the two aliens.

Moriarty shrugged, digging his gun deeper into Rose's flesh. "I like havoc. Not enough to want to fight in the Council's messy war, though."

John noticed Rose's eyes widening at the word "war." Clearly, she knew more about this than he did. The best he could do was guess Moriarty wasn't speaking of the city council.

The Doctor straightened. "They brought you back to fight for them?"

Moriarty sneered. "Like you didn't know?" From the Doctor's expression, John thought he hadn't.

"I knew they were thinking about it, but..."

"But?"

"Didn't think they'd be that foolish." Finally something John could agree with. Whoever had let this maniac loose had definitely been a right and proper fool.

Moriarty laughed. "Yes, you're always overestimating people, aren't you? They were desperate. They brought me back. I saw we were losing. I ran."

"Admirable courage," Sherlock remarked drily. Neither of the aliens even glanced at him.

"But why this? Why hide in _Sherlock Holmes_? You could have just used a Chameleon Arch!"

John felt a lot like the times he'd heard Mrs. Hudson talk about one of her TV shows to her friend Marie Turner. He was missing so much back story that they might as well have been speaking a different language.

"And then what?" Moriarty sneered. "I didn't think any of us would survive the war. With no Time Lords left to find me, I might have spent the rest of my life as a human with a broken fobwatch!"

"So how's hiding in a book better?" Jack asked. Valid question, John supposed – if that book wasn't the entire reason one existed. Sherlock's raised eyebrow seemed to indicate he was thinking along the same lines.

"Ah, my dear little monkey, _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ is far more than just a book."

The Doctor nodded. "For a few centuries, it's a story everyone knows. People think about it, retell it, are inspired by it... it's part of cultural consciousness."

"So alive!" preened Moriarty. His shrill voice was really starting to grate on John's nerves. "So much power in that idea! It was only a matter of time till enough of that energy would filter into the Spark of Dji'Niyess to start a reaction."

"And that's how we became real?" asked Sherlock. "Because so many people thought about the story?"

The Doctor shrugged. "All stories are real. Just as real as people make them." He looked back at Moriarty. "So you changed a beloved story forever, and then destroyed it, risking all reality, just to save your own skin?"

Moriarty shrugged. "Does that surprise you?"

The Doctor sighed. "Not really, no."

"Umm... not that all of this isn't interesting..." Rose started.

"You'll be fine, Rose." The Doctor stated it as a fact.

"Yes, you probably will be," Moriarty agreed. "What would be the fun in hurting you? With your young man itching to draw his weapon, I couldn't even stay around to gloat. As long as everyone stays calm and lets me walk out of here..."

"I can't let you get away," the Doctor said. "You know that."

"You can't stop me. You know that." The darkness in his tone made his voice sound almost normal for a moment.

The Doctor took a step forwards, spreading his hands. "Come with me!"

"What?" Rose and Jack exclaimed at the same time, their faces identical masks of shock. John sympathized.

"It doesn't have to be like this. We can travel together. I have the last TARDIS. We can travel the universe."

John saw Rose and Jack staring at the Doctor, but neither spoke.

"And conquer it?" For a second, there was a glimmer of longing in Moriarty's eyes.

"See it. Just see it." His voice was invitation and threat at once.

Moriarty looked at the Doctor in a way that made John think of a starving wolf. "Ask me, then."

"Come with me. Please." He took a step towards him, arms spread.

Moriarty took a step back, dragging Rose with him by the throat. She stumbled, but he held her upright. "Ask me by name."

The Doctor didn't hesitate. "Come with me, Master."

A small smile played on Moriarty's – the Master's? – lips. "Come with you, travel, see the universe–" His face darkened. "–but leave it as I find it? Never take whatever strikes my fancy? Never destroy anything just because I want to? Let people live their insignificant little lives? _Help_ them, maybe?" He laughed. The shrillness of his voice made it sound like a siren. "I'd sooner die, and leave you to be the last again."

The Doctor looked desperate. John half-expected him to beg.

There was a beeping sound. The Master smiled. "But not today." He pulled Rose closer – her eyes bulged as he put pressure on her larynx – to peer over her shoulder at what looked like his watch. "My ride's here!" he beamed. "Much sooner than expected." He chuckled. "Never mind about letting me _walk_ , then."

"No, don't–" the Doctor took a step closer.

"So long, Doctor. I'm sure I'll be seeing you." He shoved Rose away from himself and straight into Jack. Jack held her upright as they both stumbled sideways into the Doctor. The Master pushed a button on his not-a-watch and... started fading right in front of their eyes. John blinked. Even after everything else that had happened today, this was unexpected. Like a particularly clever special effect being pulled off right in front of his eyes.

"Oh," the Master added, looking at the Doctor with semi-translucent eyes. "Be a dear and fix reality for me, would you?" He chuckled. "I'll be needing it."

In a blink of an eye, he was gone.

The Doctor stared wordlessly at the space where he'd been. He wasn't moving – John wasn't sure he was even breathing.

John turned to Rose to make sure she was all right, but she waved him off, stepping closer to the alien. "Doctor–"

He stiffened and shook his head. "No. Not now."

John saw Rose look at Jack helplessly.

"Leave it for now, Rose," Jack said lightly. "We'll talk later." His voice hardened. "Right, Doctor?"

The Doctor looked around at his companions, and for a second his gaze was almost pleading. Be seeing their faces – concerned, but set – he nodded. "Yeah. We'll talk later."

John would have loved to grab Sherlock and leave to let them talk – even Sherlock looked like he'd rather be anywhere else – but there were other things that mattered more. "Excuse me," John began. All eyes turned to him. "Where did he go?"

The Doctor shrugged.

"Some transport ship," Jack explained. "He must have set it up earlier. They got here, he sent them the signal, and they teleported him aboard. By now, he's probably out of the solar system."

"Right. Of course." John shook his head, trying to focus on the more immediate problem. "He said you should 'fix reality'?"

The Doctor took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. "Like I said. This whole fact/fiction crossing is messing with the stability of the universe. With him leaving the planet, being that far distant from the fictional event he realized – that's the two of you an' the rest – the strain on reality is only going to get stronger – like pulling on a loose thread in your jumper. Well, nothing like that, really. But same principle. Need to sever the threads and weave them back into the fabric of reality."

Sherlock looked at him sharply. "So... we'll still be real afterward?"

The Doctor shrugged. "S'ppose so. Still not sure how he did it, but I doubt he'd let me send him back into fiction. Must be set up so making you all part of this reality is the only way to stabilize things."

"Why didn't he fix it himself?" Sherlock asked. "Apparently he's as clever as you, and he has the technology. Why would he need you?" John winced at Sherlock's lack of tact, as unsurprising as it was, and shrugged at Rose apologetically.

The Doctor didn't seem to notice. "Probably would have if I hadn't shown up. The Master doesn't much like fixing things unless he needs to." A long-suffering sigh. "Prefers creating messes and leaving the clean-up to me." The way he said it made it sound like a long-standing pattern. John desperately wanted to know how these two knew each other.

"How do you two kn–" He stepped on Sherlock's foot hard before his flatmate could ask the question.

"So," Jack sounded pointedly business-like. "How do we fix this? We still don't know where the Spark is."

"I might be able to help with that," Sherlock said, staring out of the window. John followed his gaze. A dark man wrapped in colorful rags was standing outside, talking animatedly with Angelo. John recognized him as part of Sherlock's spy network.

They went outside. John noticed that Jack and Rose were staying close to the Doctor, practically flanking him, but both stayed quiet.

"Amrit," Sherlock greeted the man. "News?"

"Yes," Amrit said, smiling. He did not continue.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "John, give him fifty pounds."

Angelo pulled out his wallet. "Let me."

"I can–" John began.

"No, no! I wouldn't hear of it! You just saved me life!" Angelo smiled, but he still looked rather pale as he handed Amrit the money.

"All right, ta. But go home now, hm? Play with your kids. Give my regards to your wife."

"But the police–"

"Nothing they can do here," Sherlock interrupted. "We'll tell them all they need to know."

Angelo nodded – clearly he hadn't been too keen on speaking to the police to begin with. He locked the restaurant and left.

The Doctor, Jack, and Rose had watched the exchange silently. Now the Doctor turned to Amrit. "You have information?"

Amrit nodded and pulled a folded slip of paper from his sleeve. The Doctor reached for it, but Amrit snatched it away and handed it to Sherlock. "Pleasure doing business with you."

Sherlock read the note. John looked over his shoulder. "That's a private residence in Hammersmith," Sherlock murmured.

Wordlessly, the Doctor got into the police car. Sherlock gestured at everyone else. "Get in! John, you drive!"

John chuckled. "If you insist."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock stumble across a strange blue box in Trafalgar Square. And that's the least weird thing to happen that day.

They pulled up to a red brick building with white trim. It was unremarkable, one of a row of five identical houses on a quiet residential street. Five steps led to the front door. The Doctor strode up, opened the door with the sonic screwdriver, and entered the house without so much as a backwards glance.

Rose was right behind him. She looked around – small kitchen on the left, then a door to a living room and another doorway straight ahead that the Doctor was currently blocking.

"Just a bedroom," he said, turning around and heading to the staircase, heedless of everyone crowding in behind her.

Rose was worried. She knew that empty look in his eyes. It was how he'd looked with the Dalek in van Statten's museum. Like there was so much pain there that he had to put up walls behind his eyes to keep it all in. But she knew he'd never talk about this in front of near-strangers. She had to admit it might be for the best. John seemed compassionate and emphatic – she would bet he had great bedside manner – but Sherlock was so bloody insensitive that he'd probably just make some heartless comment that'd make it worse.

Jack squeezed her shoulder, his eyes showing the same worry she felt. They followed the Doctor up the narrow stairway. He was working on the door with his screwdriver, cursing quietly.

"Problem?" Jack asked.

"Deadlock."

Jack pulled a blaster seemingly out of nowhere. "Want me to–"

"Didn't I tell you to leave that bloody thing in your room, Captain?" The Doctor's eyes flashed with much more anger than warranted – yes, he always told Jack to leave his weapons. But he knew damn well Jack always brought at least one anyway.

Jack didn't respond, he just looked at the Doctor calmly and collectedly. Rose could feel Sherlock on the step below her bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet. She guessed that all that was keeping him from making a snarky comment was a stern look from John.

Jack and the Doctor stared at each other for what seemed like minutes. Finally, the Doctor's shoulders slumped and he took half a step sideways. "Go ahead, then," he said tiredly.

Jack carefully adjusted the settings on his blaster and pulled the trigger. Half the door disappeared. Rose heard John gasp, and there was even a sharp intake of breath from Sherlock.

The Doctor squeezed through without comment. They followed.

The whole upper level of the house was one large room. It looked like a curiosity shop had exploded in a junkyard, but from the way the Doctor was looking around, mumbling under his breath, the set-up clearly made sense to him.

Sherlock was also examining everything. He reached out to touch what seemed to be a typewriter, but the Doctor caught his wrist and glared at him in a way that made even Sherlock back off and stand by the door, where John was leaning, taking in the scene but not trying to participate.

Rose looked at Jack, who shrugged.

"I can tell what a few of these are, but – oh, look at this!" He pushed a button on what appeared to be a milk bottle made from black glass, and a hologram sprang to life. It looked like schematics of some kind. "Doctor?"

"What?" he snapped, continuing to examine a small blinking box.

"Look at this."

The Doctor turned with an impatient grunt. He saw the hologram and almost leaped towards it. He played his fingers over the bottle in ways that seemed random, but which clearly controlled the image, spinning and tilting it and zooming in and out.

Jack turned to John and Sherlock. "Look, we'll be a while here. Why don't you two go and talk to Lestrade, fill him in on what he needs to know." He smiled his conman-grin. "Ideally, as little as possible."

John nodded slowly. "Might be best. What do you think, Sherlock? Nothing we can do here, anyway. You'll be bored just standing around."

Sherlock seemed reluctant. "I'll be bored talking to Lestrade as well. Why don't you go fill him in?"

Rose glared. She really wanted some time alone with the Doctor. Why couldn't Sherlock understand that?

She saw John elbowing him in the side.

"On the other hand," Sherlock continued smoothly, "John hasn't eaten anything all day! We should probably go and take care of that."

"Yes," John nodded. "I'm starving."

The Doctor grunted. "You can wait at the TARDIS when you're done. Won't be long here."

Rose saw John raise an eyebrow at the Doctor's back. "We won't leave without talking to you," she promised.

They nodded and left, John half-leading and half-dragging Sherlock down the stairs.

As soon as they were out the front door, Rose turned to the Doctor. "So, who was that bloke?"

He was still studying the hologram, his back to her, but she saw his shoulders stiffen. "Someone from my past. You don't need to know."

"Yeah?" Rose put up her chin. "Well, he's also someone who in _my_ not-too-distant past held a gun to my head while almost choking me. So I bloody well do need to know!"

The Doctor spun around, his face chagrined. "Are you all right? Should have asked right away..." He approached her, raising the screwdriver to scan her.

She took a step back. "I am _fine_. You're the one walking around like the living dead and biting Jack's head off over trying to help. So spill."

The Doctor looked from her to Jack.

"She has a point, Doctor. If you're going to snap at me, at least give me a rough idea why." His tone was easy – Jack was excellent at keeping the mood light even during difficult conversations. But his eyes said that he wanted answers.

The Doctor sighed. He turned and inspected the hologram once more, then he opened a toolbox standing on what looked like a futuristic bar stool. He tossed her a pair of pliers and pointed at a bunch of colorful cables emerging form a lava lamp. "Strip those. At least two inches each." Then he pointed at a gadget that looked like a smaller version of the machine he and Jack had used in the control room earlier. "An' you calibrate that, lad. Same as before, except you need to invert the coordinates with an Leopoldian algorithm. You know how to do that?" Jack nodded. "Fantastic." He pulled out his screwdriver and started poking at a gameboy that was wired to a furby. "Talk while we work, then."

Rose and Jack exchanged a glance. Tinkering was always soothing to the Doctor, and of course it was important to sort this. They both started their respective tasks.

A few minutes passed in silence, and Rose was just considering putting down the pliers and demanding the Doctor stop trying to distract them when he spoke up, so quietly she had to strain her ears to understand.

"His name's the Master. He and I... we went to school together." Rose could tell they were more than just classmates.

"Was he your friend?" she asked, looking over her shoulder.

The Doctor shrugged.

"Your lover?" Jack asked. Rose froze and looked from him to the Doctor. His caught-out look said it all.

"He and I were... alike in a lot of ways." The Doctor spoke without looking at them, his hands busy tinkering. "Not interested in upholding Gallifreyan tradition, annoyed with the infernal non-intervention policy, bored with the idea of just sitting on the homeworld and watching from a distance. We wanted to get out there, travel." He closed his eyes for a moment. "He was my... That is, I thought we were... " He shook his head and snorted in annoyance. "Let's just say I never expected it to fall apart."

"Why did it?" Rose asked quietly.

The Doctor said nothing.

"You weren't as alike as you'd thought," Jack offered quietly. The Doctor looked at him, surprised. "You wanted to get out there to help people. He wanted to rule them. You had to realize that his vision and your vision would always put you in opposite camps." Jack shrugged. "Happens to the best of us." Rose decided then and there that one day she'd have the story behind that statement out of Jack. But now was not the time.

The Doctor shook his head. "I was a very different man back then. I didn't care about helping. I just wanted to visit, study. But he... yeah, he wanted to own."

The Doctor's first love had turned evil. Or turned out to have been evil all along. She thought of Jimmy Stone and couldn't help herself – she dropped the cables and went over to hug him.

It was a sign of how shaken up he was that he let her. But after a few second, he gently pushed her back towards the cables. "Need to get this done, Rose."

He took a deep breath and continued. "We've run into each other more times than I can count over the centuries. 'The enmity of ages,' some oh-so-clever Gallifreyan watchers called it."

Rose looked at Jack, who shrugged. There was really nothing they could do or say.

"He'll pop up again, I'm sure," the Doctor said quietly, staring off into space as if he wasn't really talking to them. "One way or the other, we'll be the death of each other."

"Doctor!" Rose exclaimed, before she realized she had nothing to follow that with. Jack's eyes said he understood the Doctor's statement on a level she didn't. And he seemed at peace with it.

The Doctor smiled at her, that big, goofy grin she loved so much. "Don't worry Rose. Probably won't be soon. He might be anywhere and anywhen now. Could easily be years or centuries."

She smiled back at him, bravely. It wasn't the Master she was worried about. But the Doctor seemed ready to move on, for now, and she knew she wouldn't get more out of him. She went back to work.

***

Two hours later, their taxi dropped them off at Trafalgar Square. She helped the blokes maneuver the "anchor," as the Doctor called it – a mess of wires and metal on wheels that looked like the lovechild of a printer and two tricycles, adorned by the Spark of Whatever that had started this all – out of the car. They rolled it towards the TARDIS, where John and Sherlock where waiting, John looking pleased to see them and Sherlock looking incredibly bored.

"Is it fixed?" John asked, and the glimmer in Sherlock's eyes betrayed that he was not as uncaring as he seemed.

The Doctor nodded. "More or less. It's all wired up and running smoothly, but it won't actually take effect until we take this bit into the Vortex."

"The what now?" John frowned.

"The place where the TARDIS goes when it goes away," Rose explained.

John nodded. "You're leaving, then?"

"Yes." Jack nodded. "And don't worry about that mess in Hammersmith. The anchor will pull out all Vortex energies and fry most of the circuits, so when we're gone it'll just be a room full of junk."

"I can get that cleaned up," Sherlock said. "Leaving no traces."

"Ah." The Doctor bit his lip. "That won't work. You won't actually remember this. Sorry." Rose saw Jack look at the Doctor in shocked surprise.

"What?" Sherlock bristled before he could say anything. "You can't just take away my–"

"Have to, I'm afraid," the Doctor interrupted. "An' it's not that _I'll_ be messing with your memories." Rose saw Jack relax at that. "It's that, once we're done, you will _always_ have been real. So none of this will have happened. Or it will, but it won't. It's... complicated. Too complicated for you to understand."

Sherlock bristled again.

"For _any_ human mind, even yours. Can't cope with entwined realities. Not your fault, biological fact." He shrugged. "Basically, your minds will cope with the contradiction by forgetting we were ever here. Far as you know, you'll be real and always have been real. Everyone else, too."

John nodded. "Might be for the best. I don't fancy running around the rest of my life knowing I'm made-up."

Sherlock scoffed. "We'll see."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Feel free to try to remember if you must. Will only give yourself a headache, though."

"What about the books, Doctor?" Rose asked.

"Ah. Those will be gone. Shame, but can't be helped. You'll be the only human to remember them."

Rose felt sad at that – so many people had enjoyed those books, and the films, and that old TV series from the 50s. But then, it had to be better than John and Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and even that wanker Mycroft just disappearing. She smiled at the Doctor.

He must have seen the sadness underneath, because he took her hand. "Culture'll be poorer for it, but not too much so. There're enough other great stories to tell. And there'll always be a copy in the TARDIS library."

"What if we change the names?" Jack asked.

"Eh?" The Doctor looked at him.

"What if we take the TARDIS copy of the book, swap out the names, and seed it back into history? If we change the names and the address and such, no one will recognize they're the same people. At most, the similarities will just look like an odd coincidence."

The Doctor beamed and clasped Jack's shoulder. "Fantastic."

Jack's smile was almost bashful. "Knew the Time Agency training would be good for something some day." Rose smiled at her two blokes and saw John smiling at her. Sherlock, of course, looked bored.

"Well then!" The Doctor rubbed his hands. "Lots of work to do!" He grinned at John and Sherlock. "Pleasure to meet you both."

"Likewise," John said, and even Sherlock nodded and almost smiled. They said their good-byes and moved the anchor into the TARDIS.

Jack and the Doctor took the TARDIS back into the Vortex while Rose flipped through the last existing copy of _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_. She thought "Dumbrick" would make a great new name for Mycroft.

***

Sherlock blinked rapidly. Well, this was... peculiar. He looked around. He and John were standing on Trafalgar Square, near Nelson's Column. Right! The National Gallery. There'd been... a theft. Venetian altarpiece swapped out for a forgery. And he had... solved the case. Of course he had. He was the world's most brilliant detective, after all. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to fend off the headache that seemed to be forming.

He noticed John shaking his head as if to clear it. There was a note of uncertainty in his voice when he said, "Well, that was... interesting." Sherlock just nodded – somehow, he didn't feel like thinking too hard about the details of today.

"Let's go home, eh?" John suggested, sounding incredibly tired.

"Yes," Sherlock said, turning towards the taxi stand. Unable to resist a little dig, he added, "Can't wait to start blogging?"

John slowly shook his head. "No. I... don't think I'll blog this case, actually."

"Hm." Sherlock pretended indifference. "Then why the rush to get home?"

John shrugged. "Just feel knackered, that's all. And _Doctor Who_ 's on in half an hour."

The End


End file.
